Directed by Danny DeVito, Death to Smoochy (2002) is a satirical comedy in which Smoochy, a fake rhino in a kids’ TV show, induces in others hostility and the hard-charging lust for money. Why did scriptwriter Adam Resnick think the film would be artistically successful if he unleashed a string of criminal mooks who would try to murder Smoochy (real name: Sheldon Mopes)? It merely causes the piece to be tiresome and obtuse. It is not even clear what DeVito’s Burke Bennett hopes to gain by knocking off the entertainer. No entertainer, this movie.
Author: EarlD Page 41 of 315
1968: a public high school in Philadelphia.
This is what Frederick Wiseman, America’s most famous documentary maker, trained his camera on 56 years ago, in High School. A dandy film, it reveals perfectly the unkillable regimentation in modern schools, although the classrooms in this particular, predominately white school do not drive us to the kind of despair that dysfunctional schools in 2023 do. Still, there are problems, regimentation or no. Bad behavior runs its course, albeit we don’t see any violence or cussing out of teachers. There is some fluff in the instruction: one teacher guides her students to appreciate the “poetry” of Paul Simon. She reads aloud the lyrics to “The Dangling Conversation,” then plays a tape of the song. And clinical lectures about sex just might have run counter to the moral values of many of the kids’ 1968 parents.
On the other hand, a Spanish-language teacher inculcates what seems to be the Spanish for “existentialist philosopher.” Nope: this is not a 2023 public school.
Possibly the best feature-film acting in 1989 was done by Victoria Principal in the TV thriller, Blind Witness. Characters here certainly make a lot of mistakes, and so do the scenarists. The film is ill-written. Intermittently even Richard A. Colla‘s directing is bad, but the performance of VP actually makes BW worthy, a minor winner.
Principal plays a blind woman who knows the police have arrested the wrong baddies for her husband’s murder. In her scenes of bewilderment and terror, Principal gives the movie no less and no more than Liv Ullmann (of Face to Face fame) would have given it. By “no more” I mean she is un-histrionic. The authenticity in her can be rather peculiar, which is fine, but usually it is not—also fine. And Principal is impeccably feminine. Other actors appear in Blind Witness and they’re good. Principal is great.
Cover of Counsellor-at-Law
I don’t quite understand what the film Counsellor at Law (1933), derived from a play by Elmer Rice, is about, but it certainly holds the viewer. This is thanks mostly to director William Wyler and his actors.
John Barrymore carries the film beautifully, with force and despair, and the women here are nigh enthralling. A successful New York lawyer (Barrymore) becomes imperiled in more ways than one as Wyler’s camera captures the unceasing contacts and interaction in this particular law firm. Regarding his direction, Wyler said, “No critic ever wrote that [the movie] was just a photographed stage play.” No, indeed. The play has been thoroughly cinematized. Indeed, Wyler’s directing is so astute and sensitive we can forgive the film’s irritatingly pat conclusion.
Re What a Man Wants, from South Korea:
A man wants to love and—er—be loved? Whatever the case, the deceitful men in this flick say they love certain women, also deceitful—chiefly their wives. Do they?
During the 2010s, with romantic comedy, South Korea seemed to be on a roll. It may be true of drama as well; I don’t know. The 2018 What a Man Wants is a saucy gem, its script, though a slight head scratcher, mostly unpredictable. I thought a woman (superbly acted by Song Ji-hyo) who refers to the Chinese as “chinks” would thereafter be a villain in the film, but no. The three writers make her more complex than that, lovable even. All involved make Man occasionally affecting. The male actors Lee Sung-min and Shin Ha-kyun are daring and brilliant. Directed by Lee Byeong-heon, the movie is lively and sensual and . . . well, if it is a sex comedy, it makes a sex comedy like David O’Russell’s Flirting with Disaster look sick.
Available on Tubi.
(In Korean with English subtitles)